The Tyler and the Time Lord
by Locheline
Summary: It was only luck that brought him back; the TARDIS had taken him just where he needed to go. But all is not as it appears, and Rose isn't the only alien who needs the Doctor's help. Rose, John Smith, Amy, 11, and an OC. Rating may go up later.
1. Chapter 1

The girl had a decision to make. She had two options; one she wished she could ignore, and another she was afraid to execute.

She was running out of time. She could hear her pursuers moving around outside, much too close, trying to find a way through the stone wall she stood against.

All too soon, several shouts of "Here! Over here!" sounded and she took a deep, quivering breath. She was out of time. She had to decide, _now._

She put each of her four palms against the circles on her teleport and was gone.

* * *

><p>Rose Tyler had a job. Rose Tyler had a flat. Rose Tyler had a bloke.<p>

As far as the term ever applied to her anymore, Rose Tyler was happy.

She finished the rest of her tea and grabbed her coat, ready to head off to work. She'd found employment at Torchwood by now, not long after the Doctor had left her for the second - and apparently final - time. She'd snagged a job as an extraterrestrial investigator, looking into strange occurrences all over the globe and deeming them emergencies or accidents or whatever else they might be. She'd learned much more about alien life over that time, and she'd done a lot of good, too. Still, she couldn't help but think that she could be doing a whole lot more good on the TARDIS.

Just before she left, Rose peeked into the living room and waited for John to let up on his project with the toaster. He was tinkering, as ever, and it took him a few seconds to notice her and stop what he was doing. He leapt to his feet when she'd finally caught his attention and picked his own coat off the floor, instantly ready to be off. He had a job as well, and it made it awfully convenient that he worked in the same branch of Torchwood as Rose did.

"It's a holographic communicator," he said with a wide smile. "Wait! I'll show you." And then he was back on the floor, fiddling with a new button he'd added to the toaster's front. Suddenly a silvery-blue light came shooting out of one of the slots, blinding John and causing him to fall back in surprise.

"It's not quite finished," he explained quickly. "I need more paper clips. And I'm not terribly certain what to use it for - the rest of the planet doesn't have a hologram system yet, after all. But that's - what was that?"

There had just been a loud crack, like a gunshot, which was quickly followed by several small popping sounds. Both John and Rose rushed to the door. "It sounded like it was just out there, just outside the door," Rose said, voicing their shared thoughts, the beginnings of a frown creasing her brow.

John was shaking his head, his eyes wide. "That - no, it couldn't be. No. No, no, no, never."

"What?"

"It sounded like a teleportation packet!"

Suddenly, there was a thunderous hammering at their door. Whoever was on the other side was either very desperate or very, very rude. John rushed to yank the door open and Rose followed his lead, her face tense with anticipation.

The handle turned, the door flew open, and a body fell through the open doorway.

"Oh my god," Rose gasped.

It was a body like none she'd ever seen before. The creature appeared to be a girl, very small, with pale peach skin and slight features. She almost looked like a pixie, a fragile creature of fiction, not to be abandoned in the harshness of reality. But the oddest things about her were the extra pair of arms that lay splayed out behind her, and the fact that she had two pairs of eyes, both sets now softly closed in either sleep or death.

"That's a keltane, she's a keltane, but what's she doing here, I wonder?" John was already out the door, babbling on about all sorts of alien nonsense and tugging on the girl's legs. "I suppose we'd better get her inside, though, here, come on."

"I wonder if anyone saw her," Rose said as she lifted one pair of shoulders and carried the girl inside. She set her on the couch and then ran to close the door. The alien was as light as a feather, the bones beneath Rose's fingers razor sharp beneath the skin. Much too prominent for true vitae, no matter what species she was. "We'd better call Torchwood though, tell them we won't be coming 'round this morning." Rose went off to find the phone as John went back to his toaster project, though he checked up on the strange girl before he did. She was alive, and her vitals were perfectly fine. Just shocked, then. "She's all right!" he called after Rose, "just unconscious! She'll be around in a minute."

And he went back to his toaster.

* * *

><p>Amy mixed the flour, sugar and butter in a large metal bowl, making faces as the mixture became harder and harder to stir. The fork soon took on the appearance of a small beehive and Amy paused to rest her stirring arm, glancing at the Doctor, who was tinkering quietly at the kitchen table. He had some sort of highly technical device laid out in front of him, several pieces scattered in a circle around it, and a pair of magnifying lenses balanced on his nose. They made his eyes look odd and Amy had teased him about them when he'd put them on.<p>

"Mind helpin' me with the oven?" she asked, a little louder than was really necessary in such a small room. Even so, the Doctor didn't glance up until the device in his hands began to glow and smoke started to spiral its way out between his long fingers. He dropped it with a shout of surprise and paused to stare pitifully at the glowing metallic contraption as if it had willfully betrayed him, then realized that Amy had been talking to him and looked askance at his companion. Remembering with a start, he nodded quickly. "Oh, yes, of course." Reaching into his coat pocket, the Doctor fished the sonic out of its depths and pointed it absently at the oven, where the dials spun into position as if they were alive.

Amy rolled her eyes dramatically. "I sort of wanted you to come and _show_ me how its done," she said with a hint of deliberation. "I might have to use this on my own someday. It's not like I've got much experience to go on." she paused, then added, "I might burn the TARDIS down without you 'round here to help."

He nodded again and, as the silence grew, added a noncommittal "Yes, of course." But he had already returned to his project, and Amy knew better than to imagine that he'd actually give her a proper response.

She slid one of several trays of cookies into the oven and shut the door, then paused, wondering where she could find a timer. The Doctor looked up and watched absently as she began ruffling through every drawer in the kitchen.

"What are you looking for, exactly?" he offered when she'd gone through each and every cubbyhole and cabinet she could possibly find to look through. She gave him an irritated glare and put a hand on her hip.

"What did I do?" he asked, eyes wide in exaggerated indignation.

"I need a timer, what d'yeh think I'm lookin' for!"

"Oh, I don't have one of _those._" He said it as if a timer was an abomination of nature and should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to exist. Amy stared at him, disbelieving, and threw up her hands in exasperation. "Well, how will I know when the cookies're done cooking? I haven't exactly got a timer in my pocket." For anyone else this might be a questionable statement, but her skintight denim skirt left no room for storing anything. The pockets might as well have been sewn shut for all she could have used them.

Amy came over to the kitchen table and settled into her chair, making sure the legs scraped loudly against the floor. "I'll have to sit here for six whole hours, just so three batches of cookies won't get burnt up!"

There was a short pause as the Doctor finished tightening a thin band of wire around the circumference of his disassembled device, and then he looked up again. "Oh, you won't be needing a timer. I'm a Time Lord." He grinned at Amy's mild confusion and continued. "I'm quite good at keeping track of things like that. Baking cookies, that is. You won't even have to remind me. I just _know_ when things happen...or are going to happen...or have happened and need un-happening with my very particular brand of help. It's just a little bit annoying, actually. And _timers_ are for people who think bowties shouldn't be worn in _public._"

She made a face at him, even though she wasn't really all that mad, and he went back to his tinkering. "And you didn't think to tell me this _before _I looked through the entire kitchen?

"Well, you didn't ask. I don't like to engage your temper unless it's absolutely necessary."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Well, a little help wouldn't hurt, thanks."

The Doctor didn't respond. He was tinkering again.

* * *

><p>Rose went into the bedroom closet and took out a tall pile of blankets, which she carried into the other room. John dropped his book as if it were on fire - which, ironically, was titled <em>Crucial Elements of Earth's Formation <em>- and took a few himself, stacking them in a precarious pile on the carpet.

"I'm gonna lift her again, get some blankets under her," Rose told him, picking up the girl's shoulders as before and lifting slightly. John nodded. "Alright then. Wait - I'll lay the blankets out first, so it'll be easier to lift her the second time. Hold on, just a tic..." he spread out one or two polyester coverlets on the floor and then took hold of the keltane's ankles. "There we are. Ready?"

Rose took the girl's shoulders and they gently dropped her onto the soft canvas of the sheets. Then they took the coverlet corners and replaced her on the secondhand couch, this time with more padding, the blankets hiding the cuts in the cushions and several fair-sized tea stains.

"I've got an old set of pyjamas too, a t-shirt and sweats, so y'might want to wait in the bedroom." Rose bit her lip, unsure whether he'd take the hint, play dumb, or miss her point completely.

He rolled his eyes. "Rose, I probably know more about her anatomy than you do."

"From books or experience?"

John sighed. "Fine. But don't wake her up _jabbering on _when you get to her ribs."

Rose frowned and opened her mouth to ask another question, but John had already disappeared. So she looked back at the keltane and began to wonder just how, exactly, she was supposed to take the teleportation packet off.

* * *

><p>Kazrie twitched as something pulled at her vest in an experimental sort of way. The ebony-ivory collage behind her eyes flickered as a shape, not unlike a hand, flashed across her muted sense of sight. All movement ceased for a quiet second, and then a less gentle touch began to tug at the snaps along the vest's sides. Kazrie let her daylight eyes peek at the unwelcome intrusion, the lids creasing ever so slightly to allow the light to pass the lashes.<p>

The woman in Kazrie's line of sight was not a keltane; the two hands she was using to remove the vest gave that away easily enough. _I made it. _That knowledge in itself was good enough for the barely-conscious girl to close her eyes and go searching for an extra hour of sleep.

But an arc of white-hot electricity, bright as infinity and twice the temperature of the sun, caused the girl to jerk away from the couch, her eyelids snapping up and an agonizing scream pearling up her throat as her spine bent backwards. The human jumped back, a tiny spark showing her lot of the bargain as the electric current raced down the curve of Kazrie's spine and exited through her heel. Kazrie gasped and fell back onto the cushions, panting desperately as she tried to find her heartbeat through the ringing in her ears.

"John!" Rose yelped in shock. "John, she - I...I dunno what happened, there was just this _lightnin'_ and I think she got electrocuted!" John was already there. He'd heard the scream, just as everybody else on the block must have done, and he quickly went searching for a pulse.

It was there, just barely, but it was enough and it allowed John to feel he'd done his bit and could turn away from her limp body. "What happened?" he asked Rose. His eyes were intense, but in the set of his mouth Rose could tell that he had no complaints to rail against her.

"I...was just tryin' to get the packet, or-whatever, off, and then it made this big cracklin' noise and I got shocked and she got hit by..._lightning,_ I dunno know what it was, but it was bloody _huge!_ ...And then, well, that's where you come in, so..." John was still staring at her intently, but he wasn't paying attention to her words anymore. Rose could tell. So she just shut her mouth and kept it shut until he'd said his bit.

"I know what that light was." Rose gave him a sarcastic look, _yes, I know that,_ but he'd looked away from her by then and his eyes were wide with some important realization. "I don't know _how_ it can be possible but if it is then she's very, very lucky I wasn't the one here when it happened. Or rather, I wasn't the one to cause it to happen." He looked back at Rose, and the words that poured from his mouth next made her unsure whether she wanted to shout, or cry, or perhaps do a little bit of both. "That _shock_ was residual energy from the TARDIS...which means we're going to have a very familiar visitor in a minute or two.

The doorbell rang.

"However," John ventured, "I really don't think that's him.

* * *

><p>Amy barely had time to register what was going on. She just did what she usually would in a situation of this sort, which was to chase after the Doctor as he went dashing off towards the control room-or, at least, Amy assumed that was where he was dashing off to. She really didn't know at this particular point in time.<p>

But as usual, she was right. By the time she arrived, brushing her hair away from her mouth and tugging at her skintight skirt, he was already leaping circles round the console like some sort of strange two-legged deer. _He's an extraterrestrial bovine,_ she thought to herself. _He's a cow from space._ Somewhere along that train of thought, a loud giggle escaped before she could completely strangle it, and the Doctor glanced at her warily.

"You're alright, Pond?" he asked, using his you're-a-hostile-alien-looking-to-destroy-Earth-and-I-can-see-that-I've-got-to-handle-this-very-carefully expression. Amy giggled at that even more, again not quite able to keep quiet. "Yeah, I'm...fine...ha...it's nothin'." He raised one eyebrow at her wayward chuckle, but chose not to question her further and dodged back around the console to type something into the scanner.

"So."

The Doctor eventually looked back around at her, his hair flopping. "Yeah?" he asked shortly. He was busy.

Amy rolled her eyes. "Where're we _going,_ Doctor? You can't just go charging off like that without explaining yourself."

An enormous grin tipped onto his face at her question. "We're going to Earth, actually. London. Pretty exciting."

Amy stared at him. "London?" she paused, considering. "But...that's...but I've been to London! And I know you've been too, so don't go tellin' me you - wait, when?"

He did an indignant sort of shake with his head and pulled a lever. "Twenty-first century."

"Why?"

"Because." His goofy grin was back, just like that. "Because I _can._"

The floor made a preemptive jerk below her feet, the raw engine power beneath the console kicking its way up her spine, and as much as she'd have liked to ask about a translation for his explanation Amy decided that she'd better find something to hang on to instead.

* * *

><p>John grinned at the short girl in the doorway, her long hair dyed in shades of black and pink. She had spray-on jeans and makeup painted artfully around her eyes, so artfully that if they hadn't been open John was sure she could have been dead.<p>

"Hello," he said, still smiling.

"Mum wants to know what you're about." She didn't smile back.

John's welcoming grin faded a bit. "Yes, well...I - "

The whoosh of engines sounded. Mr. Smith glanced behind him apprehensively, unsure what to do in this situation. There were only two rooms in their flat in which the TARDIS could actually fit, and both were visible from the front door.

"John, he's here!" Rose's voice barely made itself heard above the grinding of the engines. John turned to look as the denser edges of the box came into view, and made one of those snap decisions that were so good for saving the day.

"What's - " the girl started, her frown wicked with all the makeup.

"Goodbye!" John said, and shut the door squarely in her face.

* * *

><p>Amy didn't think she had ever had such a bumpy ride in the TARDIS. In addition to being flung back and forth, she was also turned upside-down and jerked over so roughly that her stomach had become glued to the floor. She'd never had much trouble with motion sickness before, but this time she'd almost lost her breakfast all over the gleaming glass floor. When it was over, she stood up shakily and tugged her clothing back into place.<p>

"Why'd it do that?" she asked indignantly, glaring at the Doctor as he stood and jumped down the console steps in one fluid motion.

"We jumped to a parallel world," he replied, dashing towards the door. "And, technically, we aren't supposed to do that."

Amy ran to catch up as he practically flung himself out the doors, and skidded to a stop when she found herself in someone's living room. As a matter of fact, the someones to which the living room belonged were sitting on the couch, staring at the Doctor in varying degrees of amazement. Or so Amy assumed.

And then she noticed the body on the couch. It was covered in blankets, but it was too pale to be human and its face had funny lines across the sides. With a start, she realized that the creature - whatever it was - had _two pairs of eyes._

* * *

><p>Rose heard the front door snap shut, and someone's indignant shout on the other side. John came back in to the living room and flashed a grin at her. "That's that, then." And he settled himself against the wall on the other side of the couch.<p>

In that moment, Rose finally admitted to herself that she had no idea what was coming next. The thought frightened her more than she believed it should.

She got to her feet just as the TARDIS became completely solid and the door swung sharply inwards. A strange man leapt out, an eager expression on his odd young face as he took his bearings. A girl came out behind him, a pretty little thing with fiery hair and a skirt that would make a minister blush.

Rose frowned. _Wait...what?_

The man caught sight of her and grinned in ecstasy, reflexively, as if he couldn't help it and had no intention of trying to. He just stared at her for a long second, giving her a once-over with his deep-set eyes as if he couldn't quite believe that he was actually seeing _her._ And then he stepped right up to her and said three words that she still swears to this day made time stop dead.

"Hello again, Rose."


	2. Chapter 2

I had intended to post this a week after the first chapter was up, but I lost track of time and ended up leaving for Austria...and then came Kentucky, and then parents, the masters of indecision. I only thought KY would last two weeks, I swear! So here it is now, three weeks of Europe and a month of farmwork later. Unfortunately, I'm going to be gone for the next week on _another_vacation after this, but I'll do plenty of writing while I'm away, and I'll come back with a shiny new chapter to add!

Anyway, because I'm posting this from my tablet and can't use the editor, I've had to do all of the formatting manually. If any of you guys spot any errors, where /slashed/ words haven't been turned into italics or whatnot, just say so. I couldn't have appreciated all of the reviews more, and I'd love another comment or two on this installment.

Finally, how many if you guys are House/Who crossover fans? I'm thinking of doing one of those with Eleven. Just tell me what you think. In a review!

::::::::::::::::

"Think of them as windows."

No one had tea. No one had chairs. Amy was sitting on the floor, legs crossed and long red hair curtained around her ears. John sat on one of the couch's armrests, while Rose sat on the other. The Doctor stood, his hands illustrating his words in all-encompassing gestures, his eyes bright and as wise as they had ever been. They were deep, deeper than John's, dark and evenly set above too-prominent cheekbones like gems that would be hard to cut from the rocks. Rose couldn't stop examining his new face, nor could she stop comparing and analyzing his new personality with the one she had known. The one she knew now, through John. The Doctor himself seemed more alien today than at any other time she had known him, even more so than in the days of American museums and the endfires of the world. He was younger than ever and yet he insisted that he was indeed older than he looked - and, of course, she knew that it was true. He was witty and cheerful and had a mouth that just wouldn't stop, but after six years of absence Rose really couldn't laugh as heartily as she used to do. She was beginning to see the oddities her mum had seen. It came from time apart. She didn't know what to say, and she certainly didn't know what to think. But she tried to act normal anyway, because she felt odd rehashing the whole Christmas incident, and she didn't want to insult him in front of his traveling friend. So she laughed at his jokes and listened to his stories and did her best to cling to his every word.

"You see, not every planet in the cosmos has a copy in an alternate reality. It's just a few of them where the universe itself has converged, where it's 'folded over' and the fabric of reality is mirroring itself. But it's like atoms against atoms, they don't actually touch each other, they just come very, very close. Close enough to make a reflection, but far enough for there to be a bit of a gap. That's where you almost got caught, Rose, after that little Dalek problem we had."

"But it's not a _mirror,_ more an ocean or a lake. And sometimes, there's a ripple. Someone on one side can get to the other side if they use the power from the surge to jump to the other side of the gap. It's highly dangerous and completely unreasonable that anyone should do it, and it's absolutely _nothing_ like a ripple in an ocean or a lake or any other body of water you can imagine, but that's how we got here." He paused for a quick breath. "_Why_ we're here is a completely different question, but it's not the one you're thinking I'll ask, and the question is this: how did you manage to activate the TARDIS energy left in your body? And how did you condense it? And _who_is she?"

He was looking intently at the Keltane. She was beginning to stir, and as she did she also began to realize that she was in a great deal of pain. A groan echoed through her slack lips, just as Amy asked, "_What_is she, that's what I'd like to know."

"She's a keltane, merchant of the universe, but she's a bit far from home. And that's why I'm curious."

"What's she doing here..." he wondered absently, moving closer to the slowly waking foreigner and folding his long legs into a crouch on the floor. He scanned her quickly; a flick of his wrist and he was done. "She's all right, she's just shocked." Then he grinned. "We already knew that, though." He snapped the screwdriver shut, then replaced it in his pocket with a flourish. "She'll be up and about within five minutes."

"And haven't you got any tea?"

::::::::::::::::

Rose was in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil and leaning heavily on the ceramic counter behind her. She was looking at her cabinets, banana yellow with designs painted in green, and enjoying the nostalgia of the colors. She'd always wanted to repaint them - still did, in fact - but the designs were Gallifreyan in origin and she wasn't sure if John would want to redecorate them. Especially if she ended up choosing the colors. He had odd tastes, and she'd never quite known the extent of them until she'd begun living with the man. Traveling with him wasn't the same; she'd always slept at least three times as much as he, and therefore she'd only ended up seeing a third of the eccentricities he was capable of. Now she got them all, and because he was so stubbornly _himself_a lot of the Torchwood staff got them, too.

"Oh!"

The Doctor had appeared out of nowhere, hopping up to sit on the counter across from Rose-and, consequently, to block her view of the cabinets.

"Are you hiding, Rose Tyler?"

His voice was kind, possibly even amused, and there was a flicker of a smile around his lips...but Rose still felt like she'd just been chastised. She looked away from his gaze - so much more piercing than it used to be - and then down, examining her bare feet against the pale linoleum floor. There was a long silence before she realized that he wanted her to say the first word, and then she admitted, "I don't really know."

"It won't be anything like Christmas, you know." Rose, mildly surprised by his guesswork, opened her mouth to speak, but something in his eyes made her close it again. "I only have to get used to you," he continued, "and you just have to get used to me. It's been a while since I regenerated." He shifted a bit and smiled. "It won't be as bad as all that."

She shook her head. "I don't want it to be like Christmas."

He chuckled at the joke they shared, but fell silent when he realized she wasn't going to laugh. She looked up when he got quiet again and saw him eyeing the cupboards behind her head. "Gallifreyan," he said.

She smiled. "Yeah. Terrible colors, but I didn't want to paint over it. I was afraid he might not want to decorate 'em again."

He grinned mischeviously. "Did he tell you what it says?"

Rose made a face. "Well..."

"He told you _something..._"

"Yeah."

The Doctor pointed. "That's a recipe for banana muffins. Those two are booklists, that's a radio song that was popular in the 50's, and this-" he gestured at the majority of the writing "-is the entire first page of my once-favorite book." His grin got exponentially bigger. "It's complete gibberish."

Rose pouted. "He told me it was all some special Gallifreyan poem he used to love!"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Well, not that I've got an excellent memory for past regenerations, but I don't think I was very fond of poetry back then." He rocked forward and then back, reminding Rose of a small child waiting for something. "Now that I think about it, I'm still not terribly fond of it." He made a face.

Rose laughed at his expression and then sobered. She found herself examining him, even though she knew it was rude and wanted to stop herself. She found that she couldn't. It was more than getting to know a stranger, it was getting to know an old friend, and he'd changed so much that she didn't want to look away.

"It's still me, Rose," he said softly. "I'm still the mad old Time Lord with a magic box."

Rose started to cry.

The Doctor frowned, worried despite himself and unsure about what he was supposed to do. Crying women were not his strong suit - at least, not in this particular incarnation - and it took him a second of consideration before he decided he ought to give her a hug. She had her eyes shut against the tears and he was sure that he surprised her a little when he wrapped his arms around her, but then she leaned into him and started to sob uncontrollably.

_Oh no, now I've made it worse,_he thought to himself, and quickly let go.

She wouldn't let him step away. He flailed a bit for an awkward second before he decided to hug her again, and she squeezed her arms tighter around his ribs. He could feel them through his clothes, so warm and soft and _human_, and he realized that he hadn't had a really good hug in a long while.

"You...stupid old man...you could've come back and you left and...you can't even..._hug_...properly...!" She could hardly speak through the tears, and her face was so firmly pushed against his chest that he had a feeling he was suffocating her. "I missed you so..._much_and then you just...blundered off again...and I...I..." The sobbing got stronger, and suddenly it seemed she couldn't even speak. "And...then...you...changed!"

He didn't bother to say anything, he just held on tight.

"And you're still _freezing_...and I can feel your _hearts_...and I _missed_you!"

"I missed you too...!" His grip tightened without him even realizing it. He hadn't meant to say a word, but there it was, and his eyes widened at his own admission. "Still, there was nothing I could do." They just stood like that for a while, until the kettle began to squeal and Rose finally had to let go. Her face was red and bleary, and she turned her back on him as she fixed the tea.

Amy popped in then, leaning through the open doorway to check on them. She had an odd look on her face, and she stared at the Doctor a bit longer than was necessary before she spoke. "That girl's awake now," she said, before dodging back out to join John on the floor. He'd been describing his toaster to her, but no matter how slowly he explained it all she just couldn't get the hang of it. Rose took a breath once the redhead had gone, splashed her face with some cold water, and then took the tea tray into the other room. The Doctor insisted on taking the biscuits, and there were at least two or three missing by the time the whole ensemble had been aranged on the coffee table.

"Well then," he said, rubbing his hands together eagerly, "Let's see what we've got here."

::::::::::::::::

Kazrie shivered slightly beneath the blankets. She swallowed, realized that her mouth was completely dry, and moved a hand. Immediately her whole arm was aching, as well as her shoulder, a slice of her neck, and her head.

_Ghuuuuh...my head...aaaahhhh..._

Somewhere far away, a voice said, "Oh, look, she's waking up!"

"What should we do?"

"I'll get some ice, and you get Rose, and then we'll do something else."

"_What_else?"

"I don't know what else, I haven't decided yet." The voice was ringing in Kazrie's ears, but it didn't seem like an angry voice. Merely an exasperated one. Still, she would have felt better if there hadn't been any voice at all. Her head was aching sincerely now, and she could feel her stomach writhing from the pain in her skull.

There was silence for half a minute, and then five fingers lifted her head delicately off the pillow and placed something cool and damp beneath the base of her hairline. She shivered again and prayed that the shivers, at the very least, would stop. Every bone in her body was hurting now, just because of them.

_Akan, what did I do?_

"You were electrocuted, actually. There was some extra TARDIS energy left over with Rose, and your teleportation belt caused it to arc. No harm done, really, but I suppose you'll be in a good bit of pain for another day or two. Aches from the muscles having cramped. Still, it's nothing you did. Don't worry about it."

Kazrie stilled. "D'd I say th't aloud...?"

"Yes." The voice sounded surprised. "But then again, you'll probably be a bit...bleh...for awhile. You know" The man seemed to be answering his own question. He had an odd accent.

Then there were more noises - a lot more. "Ah! Tea!" the familiar voice said.

"Oh! What kind?"

"You'll find out..."

"It's just Earl Grey."

"Rose..."

"Well, it i - stop that!"

"They're good!"

Plates rattled and papers were shuffled about. Kazrie cringed at every noise. There was a smack.

"Ow!"

"Doctor! Stop it!"

Kazrie tensed at the name.

There was a third voice now, one that had an even odder lilt to the tongue. "And here's where he pouts."

"But they're _good_."

"Well then, we'll buy some more later." The first female voice was firm.

Kazrie forced herself to open her daylight eyes, cringing when her skull pounded all the more with the light.

"Oh look! She's awake!" The Doctor's voice - which Kazrie had taken to memory rather quickly - sounded eager and cheerful, but she refused to let that ease her tensions. A head loomed over her, dark-haired and foreign with its two deep-set eyes. So this was him...the Oncoming Storm, the Vengeful God, Akan's black-hearted brother. Kazrie couldn't help it - she cringed away from him into the pillows.

"Ah. Well." He turned away, presumably to look at his companions, then returned his gaze to her. "That's flattering."

The second male spoke up. "I suppose they must still be a bit upset about that incident with the Exatures..."

"Yes." The Doctor made a face. "'Akan's black-hearted brother', that's a bit...extreme."

Kazrie's eyes widened. _How did _he_ know?_

"Who's Akan, then?" the girl with the odd accent asked.

"Their deity." There was a bit of an awkward pause after that.

Then the Doctor's face came back into view. "Don't worry, we're all here to help," he said with a smile that had none of the malice Kazrie would have expected. He just seemed...happy. She was having a hard time imagining him crushing her entire society in less than half a day...but still. He'd done it. There was more than enough evidence of that, and she refused to let herself relax at his words. "Just got to figure out what the matter is," he continued, and flicked a small silver device over her with a sweeping motion. She grit her teeth at the noise.

"Ah. I'll be _right_back." And then he popped out of sight, rushing into the TARDIS with nary a backwards glance.

::::::::::::::::

The Time Lord returned in less than five minutes with a long, thin bag that sported a very thick black industrial zipper.

"What's that?" Amy asked immediately.

"Med kit." Rose, John, and the Doctor spoke simultaneously. The Doctor continued. "The TARDIS keeps it stocked. I...well, I seem to forget."

"Be glad you've never seen it," Rose added.

"But how is _that_a med kit?" Amy pressed. "It wouldn't hold more than a stethoscope or two!"

"Ah." The Doctor grinned. "It's dimensionally transcendent.

John was grinning too. "It's bigger on the inside."

And then the Doctor proceeded to unzip the pack and reach his entire arm into the container, along with a bit of his head. "It only needs a zipper this long," he shouted, "so that the bigger stuff can come out!" His voice echoed inside the bag, but it was also muffled by the cloth on the outside. It was an odd mix.

"Aha!" He popped back out, holding a small container of pills that was rather more colorful than it probably needed to be. "This should do it." He turned to the girl on the couch and unscrewed thr bottle, removing one pretty green capsule. "This will get your muscles back into shape. Say 'aah'!"

The girl definitely did _not_'say aah'. "D'n't trust ya."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, my visit to your little planet was a very long time ago and they shouldn't have been selling slaves. _Especially_ the nurses." He completely forgot the pill he was holding as he gestured about with his hands. "And I don't care _what_those nurses did to deserve it, they were much too smart to be forced into slave labour. They had a century of knowledge there, all built up, and your Exatures just wanted to sell them off to massage peoples' feet. It was a bad idea."

The keltane seemed to be gaining strength as the Time Lord spoke, though it certainly wasn't strength of support. "And you...couldn't just let it...go bad?"

The Doctor made a face. "Well...there were other races involved."

"If they wanted freedom..." she paused for breath ..."they should have fought for it!"

"But hundreds of them would have died, and they weren't only the Keltanes that got into the middle of that mess, either. Your society just had to have a bit of a new start, that's all."

She stared at him in disbelief and moved to sit up, only to find that she couldn't. It hurt too much. "We didn't even know what you'd done until half a century later. You ruined us, and you didn't even give us the chance to fight back."

"Yes, well, that's the nature of time travel. But I think you might feel better about arguing after you've taken this pill. Oh, look! It's pink."

She grit her teeth and glared.

"I'm not going to _poison_you, if anyone's going to get poisoned, it's going to be me. It doesn't take much on Earth. Trust me."

She still didn't move.

"All right." the Doctor sighed. "I'll just leave it here with your tea, and you can eat it later. It tastes like kirwitz, by the way." He got up, snatched one last cookie from Rose's plate, and made a dash for his police box.

Rose jumped up after him. "Doctor! Come back here with that!"

::::::::::::::::


End file.
